Carnaval Outreach

It’s been a while since I last wrote but that’s because I’ve had no free time! We took off two weeks of lecture phase to do outreach in Carnval, which is the 3rd largest party in the world. It’s like Mardi Gras. There was about 200 hundred people on base for outreach, some where other ywamers on outreach and others were from churches.

On Monday and Tuesday, we worshiped and prayed for Carnaval.

On Wednesday, we went out to the gates of Carnval and prayed at each gate and sang songs along the street where Carnaval would take place.

On Thursday, we went out into the city and did bible distributions! They want to end bible poverty by giving a bible to every home. Not just in Mexico, but worldwide. That was so much fun! My group prayed for everyone we handed a bible to and some prayers involved healings. One lady opened the door and couldn’t stand straight because she had back surgery. We prayed over her and she said she felt a little better, so we prayed again and she said it hurt but not nearly as bad. A guy in my team said that he believes that if she walked around her house and praised God for all he has done and is doing, then her pain will go away. We left her house and went to another woman’s home. This time, this lady had knee problems which made it difficult for her to walk up and down her stairs. We prayed over her and she was able to jump and walk the stairs with no problem! We left her and checked back on the other lady we had prayed for and she opened the door, standing straight, and said the pain was completely gone! God is a healer! It was so cool and encouraging to see God’s healing take place.

Thursday night was the start of Carnaval. We all went in as a group and evangelized to anyone we felt on our hearts to talk to. By the end of the night, (12 am), my group was tired. I prayed that God would bring people to us, instead of us hounding down people. And what do you know! 5 seconds later a group of 4 people came and sat next to us. We talked and found out that they believe but one person hates church because he thinks it’s boring. We asked if we could pray for him and he was so unwilling and walked away and bought a beer. We talked with his friends who really wanted prayer! When he came back, we were in the middle of praying for his girlfriend and their friends. After asking 3 times, he finally let us pray for him.

On Friday, we all went out with our ministry groups. I was in the women’s ministry. We were focused on telling women and girls who their identity is in Christ. But on Friday, we did a human trafficking compaign. I wasn’t in it so I would sit with other people in my group and just prayed for the event. All the people apart of it held signs and the girls had make up bruises. The signs read: “I am obligated to have sex”, “I pay for sex”, “every 30 second there is a new victim”, “I am forced to make pornagraphy”, “I’m addicted to pornagraphy”, “I prefer younger women”, “I’m 13”, “I say I’m looking for woman, but I’m only looking for sex”, “I’m a person, not an object”, “there are 30 million sex slaves in the world”, “so human trafficking doesn’t exist?” “I just want to be loved” (guy and girl holding this sign). So it was a pretty intense campaign. There were a lot of people that encouraged us and told us they agree with what we are doing and there was even a camera man from CNN that videoed the whole thing but they’re were also people that would laugh, ignore, and take pictures of the sign that described them.

On Saturday, we placed out flowers and candies with notes attached. Each note was different and said something like a bible verse or “you’re a child of God” or “you’re beautiful”. We didn’t see much impact but one of the ladies we handed a flower to ran into the Inside Evangelism team and told them that she really needed this and the team got to pray for her!

On Sunday, we set up a table to paint nails for women. Our leader was able to connect with some of the testimonies of these ladies and lead some to God!

On Monday, our last night, we went outside of Carnaval to the city square that was having a party and we did the human trafficking campaign again. This time it was so much more degrading. I was in it, holding “I’m obligated to have sex”. So many guys would smile creepily at me, wink, or point to their girlfriends and tell them that they are obligated. It was a totally different crowd. They either didn’t care, thought it was gross, ignored the facts, or made fun of us. I saw a group of guys look at us and then pass condoms around. My heart hurt for everyone.

Carnaval brought such a heavy and dark spirit over the city. I can’t even explain it. Anytime we were in carnaval, my shoulders hurt from the heavy atmosphere.

Being nonstop for those days and experiencing all that made me extremely exhausted, physically and emotionally. I’m extremely homesick and just fighting to get past it. We have the next few days free so I’m going to take this time to spend with God and relax.